General Characteristics of an Amplifier.

Every amplifier is characterised by voltage amplification Av , current amplification Ai ,

input impedance zi and output admittance yo . To perform computation of these parameters
is necessary to transform the concrete circuit in his equivalent in c.a. current. For that are
two rules:
every capacitance is a short-circuit in c.a. current
the d.c. biasing source is a short-circuit to the ground
Taking the most usual circuit, the CEC transistor, let be the amplifier showed in Fig.1.
The equivalent c.a. circuit, taking into
account the upper rules, will be the circuit
of Fig.2 . In Fig.2, by doted lines are
introduced in the circuit of Fig.1 the input
signal source (vg and Rg in the output
circuit the load resistor (RL). Now in fig.2
we must replace the transistor with his
equivalent hybrid circuit, in this case with
the hybrid circuit for CEC transistor. Will
result the final equivalent circuit, showed
in fig.3.

The resistor RB is the equivalent resistance of the self-bias circuit (resistors R B1 and RB2 in
parallel connection).
Fig.1

By definition the current gain Ai is

Ai

iL
ii

1.1.

50

for a simplified computation, in fig.3 we will take into account the load resistor as the
equivalent resistor RL=RCRL/(RC+RL), then the fig.3 becomes fig.4

then the current gain is:

i
h i h oe v o
iR '
A i c fe b
h fe h oe L L h fe h oe A iRL '
ib
ib
ib
h fe
Ai
1 h oeRL '

1.2.

The input impedance is defined by

zi

vi
ii

1.3.
51

then, from fig.4 we can compute this impedance, applying the second Kirchoffs low for the
input circuit:
zi

v i h ie ib h re v o

h ie h re A iRL '
ii
ib

1.4.

Now, we can compute very simply the voltage gain, which is defined by:
Av

vo
vi

1.5.

then by the same way used in last demonstrations, we will find:

Av

v o iL R L '
R '

Ai L
vi
ii zi
zi

1.6.

The last parameter which we must know is the output admittance (impedance). This is
defined by the next relation:
y0

io
vo

1.7.
vg 0

This parameter is defined in condition of input signal source in shot-circuit (v g=0). Then
y oe

h oe v o h feii
h i
h oe fe i
vo
vo

1.8.
v g 0

But from input circuit applying second Kirchoffs Low we can write
0 R 'gii h iii h r v o

y oe hoe

hfehre
R'g hie

ii
vo

vg 0

h re
R 'g h ie

and if we replace this expression in 1.8. we will find

1.9.

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